"So we now have the official price for the WSJ iPad app subscription: $3.99 per week with a monthly credit card charge of $17.29. For that you get subscriber-only content areas such as Business and Markets with access to a 7 day archive that can be downloaded and read at any time....
...
Without the subscription, the free WSJ iPad app is limited to top articles and market data. Here's the catch: a subscription to both the print and online versions of the Wall Street Journal will currently set you back just $2.69 per week (plus 2 weeks free) for a monthly bill of $11.67... eleven dollars and sixty seven cents. Granted the WSJ claims that the 80% discount is a limited time offer but these newsstand discounts are always available in some form....."

But hey, this iPad-compatible content costs $$$$ to develop, in addition to the regular site....

And TUAW claims that: "...Esquire plans to offer an ad-free, downloadable format of its April issue for $2.99, $2 less than the paper version's price. ... Men's Health is reportedly going to charge the same $4.99 price for an iPad issue as they charge for the print version...."

Anyway, I am curious, how many subscriptions are the iPad owners here ready to purchase and keep in the long run? Answer truthfully now

I'd definitely get some subscriptions when I end up getting an iPad or another tablet.

Not sure I'd do a newspaper as the free NY Times app has enough for me, along with the free BBC, NPR, AP apps etc. Along with reading the local paper in the web browser.

I'd probably do a magazine or too. I'd like a good electronic version of Newsweek. I let my print subscription lapse as I was having a hard time keeping up with reading it, and hated recycling a magazine a week. At least the latter is removed with an e-version.

Price matters, I only paid $20 for my year of Newsweek most recently (Amazon price), I'd be willing to pay around that for a weekly magazine in e-form.

I'd actually get subscriptions to magazines, but not on the iPad. I would want PDFs, which I can keep in my library (which is what I do with Scientific American, which offers PDFs, for instance).

The iPad unfortunately is a proprietary format, which cannot be transferred later, when one changes platforms. The same is with iBooks purchases, I suppose.

Agree.... Until there is a way to strip DRM and make the content "future proof" count me out. I buy books (for example) from Kobo, simple because I can rid them of DRM easy. I will not buy an iBooks book until I can strip the DRM. (I Will take the free ones though) and on that subject......

I have had iPods since 2004, and iPhone for almost 2 years..... And yesterday i got the first thing ever from iTunes.... A free book....

The only things at this point I buy from apple are the devices, and apps......

"...Esquire plans to offer an ad-free, downloadable format of its April issue for $2.99, $2 less than the paper version's price. ... Men's Health is reportedly going to charge the same $4.99 price for an iPad issue as they charge for the print version...."

A two year subscription to the hardcopy Esquire currently goes for $8.00, or 33 cents an issue.

it's really going to depend on the magazine/journal and how much they want for it and the format. i'm with bremen, i want something that is in a format i can use 10 years from now, pdf or epub or plain old text files, not some drm or proprietary format i won't be able to open. i also expect the electronic price to be less than the dead-tree price or it's a no-go, unless the electronic version has some significant extras to it.

I would't want to save them anyway. Each issue would get deleted as soon as I read it, just like print magazines go right in the recycling bin.

And in real life that's what I would do. But, I'm a bit odd (I think most here have figured that out) in that I want options. If I want to stack print magazines to the ceiling, so be it. If I want to toss them in recycle or trash, so be it. I just want the options to archive electronic content. I may never eve do it, but I want the option. To me if I buy something, it is mine, to do with as I please.

And in real life that's what I would do. But, I'm a bit odd (I think most here have figured that out) in that I want options. If I want to stack print magazines to the ceiling, so be it. If I want to toss them in recycle or trash, so be it. I just want the options to archive electronic content. I may never eve do it, but I want the option. To me if I buy something, it is mine, to do with as I please.

I am with you here.

I also keep some magazines, and sometimes it's fun to re-read ten year old predictions or promises in political articles.

Yeah, I know people who keep magazines too. I've just never been a pack rat.

That's the only reason I got a Kindle--I read a bit more now that I don't have to hassle wit the library or finding a way to get rid of a paper book after I read it. I hate having crap cluttering up the condo.

depending on the magazine, i keep it. i have every issue of Make for example, re-reading back issues can come in handy. but if i had People, would I want last month's issue let alone last week's? not at all. my professional journals are very important to keep around for research even years later.

future-proofing is important, paper magazines are the most resistant to technology change because they don't need technology to read them. PDF has fortunately found itself turned into a "standard" format over the past few years, so magazines in PDF format are great. any other format has yet to be proven, even ePub can't say it's here to stay forever, it's still too new.

so the most important "feature" an on-line magazine/journal/book can offer me is that i'll be able to open it up in 10 years or 20 years, this includes the ability to take it to a new platform. i can still open text files that were written in the 70's written on a PDP-11. after that, the ability to search and index the file is important.

I do keep my scholarly journals, though I keep those in my office and not at home.

And even those aren't so important anymore since they're all fully available electronically, and those aren't going away (unlike magazines etc.) since they're maintained by the publishers, university libraries etc.

I may take the option next year on them to pay for a cheaper membership that only includes electronic access rather than the print journals.

I have back issues of some journals from the 60's and 70's that haven't and most likely won't be made into any electronic format. No, I don't read them daily, but they're still of some value to me at least. I also write commentary or notes in my journals (I didn't say I encased them in carbonite) which wouldn't be present in an electronic format. PDF's with a reader that allowed me to mark them up would be fine, but there is only one application for the iPad that will allow you to add notes to PDFs and it's not ready for prime time. GoodReader is great for reading but has no abilities to note up PDFs either.

Pretty much all the journals in my field are electronic even back to the early 20th century. Quality isn't great as those are just image scans of the journals, but very readable.

And yep, the markup options on the iPad seem a bit limited--though my girlfriend hasn't bought iAnnotate so I've not tried it first hand. And the screen is a tad small, another 1" or 1.5" would make a big difference for larger PDFs.

That and the lack of a file management system are the main things that have me waiting to see what the 2nd gen iPad adds, what Android tablets come out and how they compare etc.